Forgot your password?
Feedback is welcome
YET another Amazon logistics centre is due to open in Spain – great news for local businesses and sole sellers who rely on the multi-national online retailer to reach a much wider customer base.
And this time, instead of being located in or close to the country's biggest two cities, Barcelona and Madrid, the delivery plant will be in a small town on the south coast, potentially providing jobs in an area that needs them the most.
The beautiful Cádiz-province town of El Puerto de Santa María, right in the heart of 'sherry country', with regular daily passenger ferries to Cádiz city and attractive streets, buildings and beaches, relies heavily on tourism and fishing for its income.
Despite this, it manages to retain a traditional essence completely the opposite of 'touristy' and is much-loved by visitors who want to see 'real Spain' whilst being close to airports, railway stations and major attractions, idyllic beaches, a vast array of restaurants and affordable, bustling nightlife, as well as being popular with international language students for all these reasons.
But tourism is necessarily seasonal, and is not Covid-proof, meaning the whopping 12,000-square-metre (three-acre) sized logistics centre on its Las Salinas industrial estate will be a very welcome feature for the local economy.
It will be 'one of the biggest and most important in Andalucía' among Amazon's fast-growing network of infrastructure in Spain, according to mayor Germán Beardo, and its presence will bring 'a dramatic revolution' for the economy 'not only in El Puerto de Santa María, but in the whole of the province of Cádiz'.
El Puerto is fortunate with its location – with a port, a railway station served by high-speed and national networks offering it quick access to Cádiz, Sevilla, Jaén and a direct link to Madrid, the airport in nearby Jerez de la Frontera, and also its closeness to Algeciras, where ferries run regularly to Tangiers in Morocco and the Spanish city of Ceuta, and which is right on the Gibraltar border.
For this reason, Amazon was attracted to the quaint, picturesque market town – the many and varied transport links mean customer deliveries will be swift and uncomplicated.
Even before the hub is in operation, just the building of it will involve an investment of over €6.5 million, providing welcome work for local constructors and suppliers who live from job to job.
Once open, the centre will need around 100 new staff members, and will increase the availability of one-off and continuous jobs for those operating up to 500 delivery vehicles.
“It's likely to create the greatest volume of business activity in industrial parks that El Puerto has seen in decades,” Beardo says.
Work has already started on building, and the centre is expected to open within eight to 10 months.
Set on a 10-acre plot, the hub will include nine unloading bays for lorries and 43 for delivery vans, with a car park providing spaces for up to 500 of the latter.
“El Puerto lost out on other major investments which went elsewhere in the province of Cádiz – such as the Luz Shopping retail mall and Ikea – but this time around, we've started the New Year with an excellent, historic piece of news, that of the arrival of the world's biggest online retailer in our town,” says a delighted Beardo.
Amazon's global network, when it started out around 20 years ago, was initially limited mostly to the UK, France and USA, then stretched out into Germany, India and Brazil, but did not 'land' in Spain until 2011.
The launch of Amazon.es was widely welcomed by expats from the former countries, who would no longer have to pay such high delivery costs to have goods – mainly, at first, books, CDs and DVDs, but extending to literally everything nowadays – sent to them in their new homes in Spain, and Spaniards quickly discovered the benefits of being able to order whatever they wanted from anywhere in the world and have it sent to their door.
Since then, Amazon has not stopped growing in Spain, with news of an extra packaging, IT or distribution hub opening being announced on average at least once a year.
Those who are reticent about using a global retailer instead of supporting local shops can take heart from the fact that Amazon Marketplace is a regular channel for everyone from small, family-run retailers to individuals trading goods to top up their income, and even charity shops – in fact, in the city of Barcelona alone, according to the company, over 2,000 small and medium-sized businesses and sole traders use the platform regularly or even exclusively for their activity.
LANDLORDS may be able to offset between 70% and 90% of rental income against their annual tax declarations if their tenants are young adults or from 'vulnerable communities', according to the planned new housing...
WE'VE only just finished our Easter holidays, and already there's another key date waiting for us.
WHICH company is seen as the biggest, most significant, most lucrative, and best-known in each province in Spain? And do these correspond with the ones that report the highest earnings? Recent research sought to...
AFTER more than six years with the Eurozone interest rate, or Euribor, in negative figures, mortgage repayments have now risen at unprecedented speed and within one calendar year, leading to first-time buyers or those...